by Hall, Ian
“My dear Valérie,” he began.
“How?” I roared at his face, regardless of the spittle that flew with my challenge. “She can’t be alive! She’d be over a hundred and forty!”
To my annoyance, Ivan’s lips cracked into a smile. “Valérie, you say you were born as a vampire.”
“Yes,”
“Then surely by that logic, your mother must be a vampire too.” He shook his head at her awkwardness. “Your mother is immortal, just like all of us.”
I felt breathless, but of course it made complete sense. I have no idea why I hadn’t thought of it before. “When did you last see her?”
I could see the conflict within him; it seemed as if part of him wanted to rush to me and gather me into his arms, the other side wanted to run as far from me as possible.
“Just before the last war.”
His answer was not nearly specific enough. “Where exactly?”
“Your mother was a spy for France,” he said, seemingly quite proud. “I last saw her in Paris.”
“When?” I forced the question further, a mixture of excitement and anger keeping my questions short.
“In the spring of 1942.”
“That’s a few years back, yet you say she’s alive now?” I challenged.
“If a member of the Council dies, we all know about it. There are elections to…”
“She’s alive!” I bawled, “and you didn’t see fit to tell me?” All thought of channeling my rage through tributaries in my body had long since left my head.
“Why didn’t she come and rescue me?” I sobbed, my tears coming unbidden.
“Ah, you’ll have to ask your mother that question.” Ivan said softly. “When I whisked her away, we all assumed you’d perished. None gave you a chance in Hades to make it through infancy.” Ivan’s hands were raised, trying to calm me down again. “Valérie! The Council searched for you, but when your father died, he left no paperwork regarding your care. We lost you for many years. The Council only found you again when Amos rose in 1939!”
I could take this no further. “The fucking Council knew I was alive, and did nothing?” my voice had risen to a shriek. I railed in front of him, my fists clenched, my nails drawing blood from my palms, wanting to hit him, yet somehow couldn’t. “I have to go find her.”
Ivan shook his head. “My dear, you could search the globe for eternity and not find her, she is an Elder herself, one of the Quorum. Complete this training, and I will promise that word will get to the Elders, hence to her. Stay with me, my dearest Valérie, and your mother will come looking for you.”
“I want the whole story over dinner.” I fumed at him.
“And Theresa?”
“She will hear at the same time as me.” I turned on a dime to leave. “We’re partners, we share stuff. Unlike some people.”
~ ~ ~
Needless to say, the spaghetti course was charged with an energy all of its own.
“I came upon your mother in an alleyway behind your house in Florence.” Ivan had chosen not to eat, but sat at our table. His fingers were clasped together in the empty space between his silverware. “When I first heard her scream, I raced to your mother’s side to see her struggle with an attacker, but the fatal blow had already been delivered. I threw the man from her, and I heard a distant crash as his bones smashed against a wall. Your mother was already passing away in my arms, she had been stabbed in the encounter, deeply stabbed.”
Not exactly the dinner-talk for meatballs in tomato sauce.
“She faded quickly, her blood coursing through her dress, and as I heard the first sounds of the servants in the garden, I knew there would be only one chance of survival.” He paused. “I could not let my Constance die, Valérie.” He took several deep breaths. “I rapidly turned her, there in the alley. I ripped the necklace from her neck, and saved her life. And as she gasped onto my wrist, she convulsed, her belly moving of its own accord. The fastest birth in history, my dear, you were jettisoned onto the alleyway cobbles.”
“The back gate opened and servants spilled out into the alley. I had no alternative; I couldn’t let your mother stay, just so recently turned, she would have devoured them all, maybe even the blood covered baby. I slashed the umbilical cord, and dashed away with your mother in my arms, leaving you in the care of the servants. The necklace lay beside you, in a pool of your mother’s blood.”
I couldn’t take more. I pushed my chair from the table and ran out of the house and across the dunes, not stopping until I felt water at my feet.
I looked across the dark ocean, and wondered if she knew where I was. I recalled her voice in the garden that day with Doctor Fabrini, and now wondered if it had been from within me or outside; had she been watching me?
One fact stood above all others. If I completed my training, mother would get the news. My resolve deepened, wanting to be the very best vampire I could be.
Storm clouds gathered off shore, and I felt a kinship with the clouds, sensing a storm coming in my life.
I turned, my shoes filled with water, and walked back onto the beach.
“Apple pie for desert,”
Enter the Căluşari
Theresa Scholes, January 1959, Miami, Florida
Ivan continued the pattern of teach and reward. At the end of phase two, the suppression of our emotions, Ivan let us loose into Miami for feeding, and he hadn’t left sex off the menu like last time. I thought it a fitting reward for passing the latest part of the training.
Last night had been one of those freedom furloughs. We’d separated early in the evening, and I hunted alone. Black dress, high heels and red lipstick proved enough to get me royally laid and the resultant feeding had been deep and strong. I left my victim drained in every way, sleeping soundly on the hotel bed with a huge satisfied grin on his face. The small puncture wounds on his neck were healing already.
I ate breakfast at the spa, my contentment mirrored in Valérie’s face.
After breakfast, Ivan took us to a small classroom we’d used before. The curtains were drawn, and the room’s light subdued, but not anywhere near dark.
“Today we start another chapter in your training.” Ivan pulled a small screen to the front of the class. He switched on a projector, which flashed a white square onto the screen. “As a help to my introduction, I’ve prepared a small slide show.”
The first slide showed a black-and-white picture of a quaint man, kinda Greek in appearance slid onto the screen, obviously a dancer of some kind, wearing a short skirt, tights and a hat with tassels.
“This is a Romanian dancer, of a group who call themselves the Căluşari,” Ivan began. “These groups formed many centuries ago, and travelled the Romanian countryside, performing for the villagers and townsfolk, but at night they were paid for altogether different services, they hunted vampires. They were well paid, and were welcomed by everyone, except, obviously, the vampires.”
“Each man in the group took an oath to God to keep themselves pure, and some chose a village queen, who danced with them. Their dances involved short sticks which they hit in rhythm with their fiddlers tunes. The name is probably derived from the Romanian, but I’ll get to that later.”
Next slide: another black-and-white photograph, much more grainy, and obviously old. “A Fecioreasca dancer from Transylvania.”
Slide: another figure. “This is either a Trilişeşti from Moldavia, or a Tântăroil from Bărbătşcul, I can’t really remember.”
I smiled at Ivan’s lapse, a chink of fallibility in an otherwise perfect man.
Slide; much grainier, two men armed with swords.
“This is a Bâ Haidău of Transylvania. All the groups have historic ties to the Romanian Căluşari, but each version dealt with the vampire hunting slightly differently. There is little doubt the Căluşari were the originators.”
Slide: a thin looking dagger. “Now we come to the tools of the Căluşari, first the Bãtrane. It’s basically a dagger, seventeen inches lo
ng, with a Spanish Toledo steel blade. The Căluşari use them in pairs to pierce the heart from front and back simultaneously.”
“Ouch,” I said involuntarily, “that’s downright mean.”
Ivan allowed himself a smile. “In the early days, vampires struck in the heart sometimes pushed themselves off the blade and vanished from the scene, recovering later far away. The pincer maneuver with the two blades stops them from sliding off, and if I’m honest, is quite spectacular when performed correctly.”
Slide: a thinly pointed sliver of wood, with a small heel at one end. “This is an Aşchie. It’s a shaped piece of hardwood about nine inches long with a machined groove on one side. It slips down the Bãtrane blade and into the vampire’s heart. If your kill has been dispatched properly, you should be able to slip the Aşchie down the side of the blade, past the ribs and into the heart with little problem.”
Man, this training had suddenly taken a serious turn.
Slide: a dart. “The Tănniş is a dart coated with poison milk from the yellow velvet plant. It’s fired by a blowgun, and if it hits a vampire, it’ll slow them down considerably. Two hits, and they literally can’t put one foot in front of the other.”
Slide: a blowpipe. “This slide speaks for itself, this is the Tănnişerai blowpipe that delivers the Tănniş dart. In the correct hands it’s accurate up to thirty feet.”
Slide: a funny looking pistol. “But of course, we’re not going to have you roam the world with blowpipes!” he laughed at his own joke. “The dart rifle was invented in 1950 by New Zealander Colin Murdoch, it’s a 50 caliber rifle and fires a dart by a compressed air charge. It’s been used extensively in the game business, but we now have our hands on the smaller portable version that we see here. It’s a 30 caliber pistol version which fires a syringe bullet by a compressed air charge. Now so far it’s a one shot item, but if you carry extra cartridges, you can re-load in about three seconds.”
As a vampire I’d never realized that we were up against such a growing technology.
Slide: a piece of metal on a wire or string loop. “This is the Căluş, the object that probably gave name to the group. It’s essentially a vampire-detecting device, when the Căluşari have a vampire suspect, they slip this between his teeth, and loop the ties round the head. If he’s then given fresh blood to smell, a vampire rarely can deny his instincts, and his canines will show over the Căluş, thus proving him a vampire.”
Ivan rose and opened the curtain.
Valérie Lidowitz, January 1959, Miami, Florida
It seemed all very well having this lecture, but I felt like I’d just had the soup course, and was looking forward to getting my teeth into dinner for real.
When Ivan had parted the curtains, I slowly turned to squint my eyes at the brightness beyond. To my dismay, I suddenly found myself facing Ivan armed with a Tănnişerai blow-pipe.
I lingered in my seat for a second too long. Pop. A pain, right in my left breast, almost like a bee sting broke my coordination, and I paused.
My body swayed, slowly, almost unperceptively, but I swayed, my movements awkward and sluggish. I made to look down at the stinging, but my head felt so groggy and heavy, it felt embarrassing.
Sticking through the weave of my sweater stood a small dart, showing about an inch long, small feathery tendrils. I looked up to see Ivan talking to me and Finch. His voice sounded high and buzzing, almost inaudible. I turned slowly to Finch, my neck hardly able to work at all.
Theresa was frozen in time, half out of her chair. Her expression probably looked the same as mine, as perplexed, and as puzzled as I’d ever been.
Hands gripped my arms, pushing me firmly back into my chair.
Time seemed to pass so slowly, I almost fell asleep waiting for Ivan to do something.
Hands waved in front of my eyes, almost buzzing around me like flies on a hot day.
Then very slowly my vision cleared, and I felt my breathing return to almost normal.
“How do you feel?” Ivan asked.
I almost panted, my breath ragged and shallow. “Punk.” Seemed to be all I could manage.
“Erudite.” Ivan said, smiling at my expense.
“Verbascum is the official genus of plants,” he continued as I slowly recovered my senses. “But they’re commonly called Yellow Velvet plants, first found in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region in the fourteen hundreds. We now know that the actual drug is a form of Mullein, taken from the seeds after flowering. If the resultant powder is brewed, and distilled, just a small amount can cause what you two have just experienced.”
I shook my head. “That was just one dart?”
Ivan nodded. “From the earliest times the dancers have always double-darted, just to make sure.” He opened a case, and pulled out a pistol. I readied myself to spring away. “The darts in these new guns contain a triple dose. You girls have been under for just about an hour. A dart will put the strongest vampire down for three.”
I’d been drugged for an hour? “Why did you dart us?”
Ivan looked at each of us with a serious expression. “I thought it important to give you a first-hand experience of what vampires go through when they’ve been darted.”
“Thanks.” Finch said. I heard a rough sarcasm in her voice.
“How long has this stuff been used?” I asked.
Ivan picked up a dart from the table, and brought it over. “I first was shown these in 1823, and was assured by the Helsing that he’d been following a family tradition going back two hundred years.”
“Woah!” My hands were already high in the air. “What did you call him? A Helsing?”
He grinned. “It’s a collective term for all vampire-hunters, it goes back to the silly Bram Stoker novel. Most vampire-hunters now actively call themselves Helsings.”
“Coming back to the yellow velvet plant,” Theresa interrupted. “Where are they grown?”
“These plants are now cultivated in the USA, and the tincture is distilled here in considerably large quantities.”
“A company actually makes this stuff?” Finch railed. “Who buys it?”
“Well. It’s not exactly a company, it’s more a cottage industry, just a few guys supplying the world.”
“Why don’t we attack the plant and burn it down?” Finch asked, her body language looked like she wanted to do it right there and then.
Ivan grimaced. “We actually adopt a ‘laissez-faire’ attitude to the Helsings. They have agreed to cull the more active of our membership, and we have no problem with that. On the other side of the coin, they’re researching to find both a cure for our condition and a stabilizing drug which could curb our need for human blood.”
I sat back, aware that my view of the world had expanded slightly. “Helsings indeed,” I muttered under my breath.
The Final Training
Theresa Scholes, January 1959, Miami, Florida
Ivan leapt through the open door to the cloth covered dummy’s side in a heartbeat, theatrically swinging his Bãtrane daggers in a high arc. With simultaneous thrusts from both the back and front, he plunged the daggers simultaneously into its chest and back and held them firmly in place.
“The vampire cannot push himself from this attack.” Ivan pointed out to Valérie and I. “He is held in place by the piercing of his heart and by the pressure of the twin blades.”
“This is only one such version of the maneuver, striking the opponent from above.” Ivan touched both Bãtranes. “You would have noticed the angle of the blades is slightly downward, and skewers the heart. You therefore aim correspondingly high on the chest and back. I jump as I strike, letting the weight of my body drive the blades home.”
He walked back to the door. “The aim of the exercise is to get both blades through the heart and touching inside. That is considered the perfect Căluşari stroke.”
Ivan repeated the motion to the dummy’s side, fluid and effortless. This time he ducked low, driving the blades upwards. He held the
m in place, indicating the angle of insertion. “I went in from below this time, and pushed myself up from the ground using the power of my legs to drive the blades in. With two blades to control, it’s important to remember that more than bone will get in the way; there’s cartilage, muscle, sinew, and organ to pierce. Your victim will probably be clothed, he may be a moving target, and you may have distractions around you, it’s a hard technique to perfect. But we have plenty of time.”
I found the whole procedure a far cry from the more spiritual aspect of the last phase of training.
“When you’ve done the strike,” Ivan continued over my musings, “the mission might be over, but if you need to deal with anything else in the room, there is one way to leave your victim immobilized.” He twisted the daggers. “The Bãtrane are made to a specific design. When pushed to the hilt into the average chest, then twisted sideways, they will wedge against the ribcage, and hold in position, therefore allowing your hands to be free to deal with anything else. With both hands available, the Aşchie can then be slid down the blade with some ease.”
I gasped out loud. “A brutal demonstration.”
Ivan produced a coin from his pocket, and flipped it. “Valérie, you’re first to try it.”
I almost gave a jealous sigh, this looked like fun.
Ivan made Valérie perform the first strike many times. Each time he critiqued her position, her blade angle, her approach, everything. In this, as in all the training, he proved a hard taskmaster.
Then I had my turn. I hit that damn dummy so many times, it seemed ages passed until I was allowed to sit back down, my legs sore, my arms weary.
Then we repeated the whole exercise twice more, from differing angles.
I sank into bed that night totally exhausted, too exhausted for sex, blood, cigarettes or anything else my vampire body could think of craving, including chocolate.
The next morning started no better.
The battered dummy stood in the centre of the room, and Ivan showed us variations, an attack from the side, allowing for movement. It just seemed to take years to get everything right. We took turns, Valérie and I, striking the cloth covered torso from a low position, then high, from one side, then another.